Campus Marijuana Moves From Dorm Room to Classroom

campus

Every semester at colleges around the world, students engage in intense studies of the way marijuana is cultivated, its impact on social situations, and more. Traditionally these studies are sort of self-directed, conducted as extra-curriculars, but as attitudes toward marijuana are changing and laws are becoming more reasonable, some students are getting the opportunity to actually study marijuana for credit—as opposed to the traditional detriment of their GPA.

Kwantlen Polytechnic University in British Columbia is now offering a 14-week online course called Introduction to Professional Management of Marijuana for Medical Purposes in Canada, geared toward pretty much what it sounds like. The class is being offered in partnership with the Canadian National Medical Marijuana Association, and according to the KPU website is “dedicated to ensuring Canadian patients who use medical marijuana have access to high quality products and services in a safe, regulated environment.”

Students enrolled in the class will engage in four modules over the course of a semester—plant production and facility management; legalities and regulations; marketing, sales, and patient acquisition strategies; and medical conditions and drug development process; which makes it sounds overall very helpful to the aspiring entrepreneur but also maybe the most boring possible way to interact with marijuana as a college student.

According to an article from USA Today, the class is the co-creation of Tegan Davis, a business development manager from Toronto’s Expachem Laboratories Inc., which assists Canadian marijuana growers in testing their product and obtaining the licenses needed to go into business; and executive director of continuing and professional studies at KPU, Jim Pelton, who told USA Today, “We did a bit of market research and the research indicated that the industry does believe there is a need for this kind of training. We are the College of Professional Studies here, so it’s really our job to respond to industry training needs.”

Any American readers balking at the news that our Northern neighbors are ahead of us in teaching marijuana classes can take comfort in the news that Boston University’s Dr. Seth Blumenthal will be teaching Marijuana in American History on campus for the fifth time this semester. Blumenthal describes the course as “not your parent’s history class…History [as a subject] really needs to rethink itself, in light of diminishing enrollments, and I think these are the types of topics we can really sink our teeth into and reinvigorate a debate about what role history plays in the larger conversation.”

Sounds interesting, and a little closer in spirit to the more typical conversations inspired by marijuana on college campuses.

Related posts

Top